Today, to further my quest to understand poetry better, I bought Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled and in the first two lines he supplied the reason:
'I have a dark and dreadful secret, I write poetry.
This is an embarrassing confession for an adult to make.'
And he's right, I stopped writing poetry because it felt vaguely embarrassing and adolescent. It's not what grown-ups do. Now the poet within me, kept in a dark and well-locked cupboard for many years, has been unleashed and I have begun again, but don't panic! I won't be inflicting my attempts on you here on this blog.
I worship the ground Stephen Fry walks on but when I heard him talk about this book on Jonathan Ross's show I found even the idea of a book exhorting you to write poetry embarrassing, and thought it would be one I would never buy. I was completely wrong about it; this is a book about the technical side of poetry, the things we should all have been taught at school but most probably won't have been. I am so glad I overcame my embarrassment and will devour it over the next few days.
The book, although I'm only about ten pages in, is excellent. In the foreword he talks about, firstly, how people see nothing wrong with amateur painters, or musicians, or cooks etc. but somehow it is wrong to write for your own pleasure (writing for yourself was something Anne Lamott talked about and one of the things I liked best about Bird by Bird).
Secondly he talks about how there is an assumption that you just know how to write poetry and don't need to learn the techniques, which is silly and, again, would be ridiculous for painters, musicians, cooks etc. I remember English lessons at school where we were taught about poetry; there really did seem to be an assumption that we had an innate knowledge of how to construct a poem, as no one ever actually taught us how to do it. Obviously everyone knows what iambic pentameter is! How stupid of me not to know! (And I was one of the few students who actually read the stuff for pleasure).
This book qualifies as one of my favourite things (finding that a book I thought I'd hate is wonderful) that I have just listed on a post at AndiLit who wrote about the things she loves, and asked commenters to add their own favourite things. It is refreshing to be encouraged to focus on the positive in life every now and again.
These were the rest of mine:
- My cat
- My husband (the order of these two is interchangable; I just heard a hairball being coughed up so should probably reverse them)
- Pink blossom on the trees in the churchyard I walk through every day - it's not quite there yet but will be very soon
- Beautiful music
- Learning new things
- Reading book blogs
- and finding comments here.
3 comments:
I should add Bird by Bird to my list of favorites. Thanks for mentioning the giveaway.
I am heading to the bookstore tonight to pick up Fry's book. I am ashamed at my lack of knowledge in poetry--we never covered it much in my Russian lit courses in college, and now that I'm a grad student in English, I find myself embarrassed at what I don't know! Poetry, here I come!
Andi, it was quite an inspirational book. I'm glad I read it.
Sarah: I have gone further into the book and learned so much about the technicalities of poetry, it's wonderful. I can see I will become obsessed with metre. I just wish I had been taught these things at school!
Post a Comment